Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein trav­els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies such as G4S, Serco, and Halliburton cash in on or­ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.

Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help cor­porations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local commu­nity forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.

What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity. Disaster Capitalism is published by Verso in 2015 and in paperback in January 2017.

Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom, published in 2013 and released in an updated edition in 2014, challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. It is released in an updated edition in 2014.

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? And Where do we find hope?
We are introduced to different belief systems – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position.
Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters. Antony Loewenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam.
Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake, published in 2013, encourages us to accept religious differences, but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

After Zionism, published in 2012 and 2013 with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution.
Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.

The 2008 financial crisis opened the door for a bold, progressive social movement. But despite widespread revulsion at economic inequity and political opportunism, after the crash very little has changed.
Has the Left failed? What agenda should progressives pursue? And what alternatives do they dare to imagine?
Left Turn, published by Melbourne University Press in 2012 and co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, is aimed at the many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes passionate and challenging contributions by a diverse range of writers, thinkers and politicians, from Larissa Berendht and Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Lee Rhiannon. These essays offer perspectives largely excluded from the mainstream. They offer possibilities for resistance and for a renewed struggle for change.

The Blogging Revolution, released by Melbourne University Press in 2008, is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe why live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so.
Antony Loewenstein's travels take him to private parties in Iran and Egypt, internet cafes in Saudi Arabia and Damascus, to the homes of Cuban dissidents and into newspaper offices in Beijing, where he discovers the ways in which the internet is threatening the ruld of governments.
Through first-hand investigations, he reveals the complicity of Western multinationals in assisting the restriction of information in these countries and how bloggers are leading the charge for change.
The blogging revolution is a superb examination about the nature of repression in the twenty-first century and the power of brave individuals to overcome it.
It was released in an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011.

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Individuals seeking to arm themselves with relevant and accurate information to counter the recent barrage of anti-Semitic allegations and media bias now have a potent new ally.

Israel This Week (ITW), part podcast and part radio broadcast, features exclusive interviews with those who defend Israel based upon facts, analysis and a passion for justice.

ITW brings together articulate representatives from around the globe – nicknamed “The Israel Information Brigade” – to bring clarity to the public dialogue on Israel and her right of existence.

“When it comes to Israel’s right to live in peace, there is no so-called balance to be had,” says Dean Rotbart, ITW Host and Editor in Chief. “There aren’t two or three sides to the issues we discuss. Those who work on this program and are interviewed by it love Israel and believe in her ideals.”

Among regular guests on ITW are editors from Honest Reporting, the international organization dedicated to defending Israel from prejudice in the media.

So basically all this is going to involve is recycling the carnard abtou Israel's right to exit argument, adn that criticising Israel means challenging Israel's right to exist.

Thus, criticising Israel's actions in Gaza and Lebanon, which included invading those lands and destroying them, means dispuiting Israel's right to exist.

And disputing that the IDF is the world's most moral army is also disputing Israel's right to exist.

Billmn makes a good observtion:

Package Deal

During a visit on Monday to Kiryat Shmona . . . Mr. Olmert said the point was to concentrate on the future. "I won’t be part of this game of self-flagellation," he said. "I won’t be part of this game of slandering the army."

New York Times
Reservists in Israel Protest Conduct of Lebanon War
August 21, 2006

I see. So either you're with Olmert or you're against the army. Reminds me of a scene from an even better black comedy:

Yossarian tensed with alert astonishment when he heard Colonel Korn's concluding words. "What's that?" he exclaimed. "What have you and Colonel Cathcart got to do with my country? You're not the same."

"How can you separate us?" Colonel Korn inquired with ironical tranquility . . . "You're either for us or against your country. It's as simple as that."

Joseph Heller
Catch-22
1961

Shortly after the ceasefire, I recall reading several comments from members of the punditburo (Israel branch) to the effect that we were about to see accountability in action, because Israel isn't like America — generals and politicians have to answer for their failures because a small, endangered state can afford no less, etc. etc.

Well, so far I haven't seen anything that looks even remotely like accountability — just the by-now familiar mixture of Orwellian lies, PR spin, carefully rigged investigations and phony rhetorical tricks (like Olmert's, which could have been ripped right from the lips of Donald Rumsfeld).

If Israel is still different from America, it sure the hell isn't apparent in the behavior of its political and military elites, from the Prime Minister on down. The battle of the green room and the war of the sound bites seem to be the only kind they're qualified to fight these days. And they're not even very good at that.

Call me a sock puppet if you will (http://rwdb.blogspot.com/2006/08/dissent-rejected.html has been borrowing bits of this blog for their own and adding their commentary), but I feel that their won't be a lot of ITW discussion about this charming snippet either: "As the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s popularity has grown, so has bizarre Israeli behavior. It is difficult to find another adjective to represent what is happening. Israeli soldiers are attacking Palestinian young people with Nasarallah’s photo as their mobile phone screen savers…"http://www.imemc.org/content/view/20956/173/

Addamo_01

Israel are pretty sore losers aren't they? What we are witnessing in Israel is narcissism and fear run amock.

This phenomenan is well explained in this article by Gilad Atzmon.

For those who are yet to be convinced that this indeed the case, I will mention that the fact that it is Iran who rushed to pay 3 billion dollars to rebuild Lebanon after the destruction made by ‘American interventionism’ leaves no room for interpretation. While America spreads destruction and death all over the world, it is Iran and the Hezbollah that offers a new beginning.

Seriously though, Israel is beginning to look like a very scary beast. Like a school bully that has been humiliated in public, it has now lost it's collective mind.

Israeli Minister, Rafi Eitan called for the readying of bomb shelters and reinforced rooms countrywide on Tuesday, in advance of a possible conflict with Iran. What the hell is wrong with these people?http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=115452…

Actually don't answer that. The explanartion is laid out in this piece:

We Are Untouchable. We are Israelis.

We are Israelis. We are untouchable. No matter what we do, the international community will not act against us.

Yes, we know that peoples all over the world have suffered worse crimes than ours, but they were not the Chosen People.

"Her mother watched anxiously. "The Israelis wanted to defeat Hizbullah," said Najah Saleh, 40. "But what did these children ever do to them?""

I guess they didn't vote the right way?

I dunno, maybe they didn't think the Jews were the chosen people?

Beats me why they do it.

Ian

Those who work on this program and are interviewed by it love Israel and believe in her ideals.

Would this be one of 'her' ideals?:

“The reality on the ground was that of an Arab community in a state of terror facing a ruthless Israeli army whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by the intimidation and at times atrocities and massacres it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community. A panic-stricken Arab community was uprooted under the impact of massacres that would be carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred.”

…[M]arzel wrote Aberjil that if she weds Jasikevicius she would be divorcing the people of Israel as well as her family.

In the letter, Marzel begged Aberjil to think of her grandparents, Jewish tradition and the Israeli Torah. “The greatest danger to our people is assimilation! I urge you in the last minute not to make this move,” he wrote.

…[I]f you wish to be informed of the dangers associated with marrying gentiles, I am leaving you my cell phone number. Please call me any time and I shall help you.”